Hey folks, I might advise anyone flying to Chicago tomorrow to pack a jacket and maybe rain gear if you intend to do a lot of walking while here. The temperature is turning decidedly colder tonight, making it more like March here than May.

Considering the fact that this was my last MSNCT appearance, I thought that I might as well make my first post on these forums. Congratulations to Shiva Oswal of Team Pi-oneers for one of the most incredible tournament performances that I have ever seen, and to all the other teams that participated over the weekend. Also, thanks so much to all of the tournament staff, Mr. Hentzel, and everyone who ensured that this tournament, as always, ran smoothly. Finally, I give my thanks to my coach, Kevin Cox, my parents, the members of my team, and all those who have helped me during my quiz bowl journey over the last four years. I look forward to attending (though sadly not playing in) many more MSNCT's to come.

Congratulations to the Pi-oneers (Cupertino, California), who defeated BASIS Independent Silicon Valley (San Jose, California) 490-335 in the first game of an advantaged final to win the 2018 NAQT MSNCT! Longfellow A (Falls Church, Virginia) defeated Challenger-Berryessa (San Jose, California) 500-300 to claim third place.

Complete team and individual statistics are now available on naqt.com.

theclassicsguy wrote:Considering the fact that this was my last MSNCT appearance, I thought that I might as well make my first post on these forums. Congratulations to Shiva Oswal of Team Pi-oneers for one of the most incredible tournament performances that I have ever seen, and to all the other teams that participated over the weekend. Also, thanks so much to all of the tournament staff, Mr. Hentzel, and everyone who ensured that this tournament, as always, ran smoothly. Finally, I give my thanks to my coach, Kevin Cox, my parents, the members of my team, and all those who have helped me during my quiz bowl journey over the last four years. I look forward to attending (though sadly not playing in) many more MSNCT's to come.

Robert Muniz

Robert,
You've been one of the most feared players since you were in 6th grade. Here's to your continued success at the high school level, where it's probably conservative of me to say you're better than 90% of high school quizbowlers already.

I would like to echo Robert's post. Shiva Oswal played incredibly well and it was a great match between us. He undoubtedly deserved that win, as anyone who watched the final match can attest. I was proud of our outcome, although there is undoubtedly a bit of the feeling of "I should have buzzed..I shouldn't have negged etc.". Despite this feeling, it has been a huge honor to have done as well as we did. As someone who had never been to MSNCT before, it is bittersweet to kiss the middle school division I have been playing in for the past two years goodbye. However, I would also like to say that these last two days have held some of my favorite memories of Quiz Bowl. I have met so many new friends, have seen so many great teams (here's to you, BASIS and Midtown), and am so thankful to NAQT, the teams we played, my family, my coach, and most of all, the fact that 987 nerds can spend two magical days in Chicago having the time of our lives.

Karsten Rynearson
Greens Farms Academy Captain
K to the A to the R to the S to the T to the E to the HOLD IT! N

First of all, congrats to Shiva/Pi-oneers on an outstanding and historic performance. (After the final, Jeff Hoppes said he thinks this is the first time a solo player has ever won a team-based NAQT national championship, at any level, and I'd imagine the same is probably true of NSC and ACF Nationals. So, while I am hardly a member of the quizbowl old guard, I think this is very likely a first for all of quizbowl, for a single player to win a national championship on all-subject pyramidal questions.)
Especially at MSNCT, where all the top teams are so similar in skill level, the value to strong players of having teammates, even if they are only getting one tossup and one bonus per round, is really significant. I'm hugely impressed that Shiva was able to make it through the gauntlet that is the playoffs -- and win the final in pretty dominating fashion -- without that benefit.

the return of AHAN wrote:Here's to your continued success at the high school level, where it's probably conservative of me to say you're better than 90% of high school quizbowlers already.

I think that's incredibly conservative, seeing as he placed 9th individually at last year's HSNCT. It's unfortunate we won't get to see Midtown Classical at this year's HSNCT, but I'm sure they'll do good things in the coming years.

karsten7814 wrote:I would also like to say that these last two days have held some of my favorite memories of Quiz Bowl. I have met so many new friends, have seen so many great teams (here's to you, BASIS and Midtown), and am so thankful to NAQT, the teams we played, my family, my coach, and most of all, the fact that 987 nerds can spend two magical days in Chicago having the time of our lives.

Karsten, you really hit the nail on the head, in my opinion, as to why quizbowl is so great. I love quizbowl not only because the activity itself is fun to spend time doing, but because the people who do it are equally fun to spend time with. To you, and everyone else who played, coached, chaperoned, or was otherwise involved with MSNCT: keep making quizbowl an awesome place. I had a fantastic time getting to meet many of y'all, whether in or outside of a round, and I can't wait to see what you are able to do in the future.

CPiGuy wrote:First of all, congrats to Shiva/Pi-oneers on an outstanding and historic performance. (After the final, Jeff Hoppes said he thinks this is the first time a solo player has ever won a team-based NAQT national championship, at any level, and I'd imagine the same is probably true of NSC and ACF Nationals. So, while I am hardly a member of the quizbowl old guard, I think this is very likely a first for all of quizbowl, for a single player to win a national championship on all-subject pyramidal questions.)

I have put together an enhanced version of the recording of the Round 20 game between Pi-oneers and Greens Farms. It has been embellished with all of the features that I think should be present in the "ideal quizbowl broadcast" (and the audio has been tripled, so you can actually hear Jonah). Hopefully, I'll have the time to give the rest of the recorded rounds from this, and other tournaments (ICT is next on my list), the same treatment.

This isn't a slight on NAQT or anything -- I think it's fantastic that these things are being streamed at all, and it took me three hours of post-production to do this, so doing it in real time is likely significantly harder and would require more advanced software, but I think it's something that organizations streaming their events can aspire to include some or all of the features from, if they have the time and technical capacity to do so. (I don't know anything about streaming software, so please don't ask me how to implement these things in it.)

Edit: there is one error in the video; Pi-oneers had a prelim PPB of 21.4, not 22.1; that was Greens Farms's prelim PPB.